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Douglas Hayden's avatar

You're on the right track, and funny we're talking about this during the Fox News v Dominion lawsuit, but I'll add that the democratization of media and campaign fundraising had a lot to do with that 'suddenly'. You could keep those conservatives in check as long as folks like Buckley, Ailes, and Limbaugh could keep telling them the leadership was listening and they understood their concerns. As long as they were the only voices around, well, who else was there to tell them otherwise? And as long as campaigns were financed by the big money guys, maybe you have the odd Pat Buchanan or David Duke sneak into a trace but that was the most damage that could be done.

Then comes the internet, and with it you get Free Republic, then Breitbart and Newsmax, and then social media where any guy with a grievance can be turned into a viral star. Meanwhile, SCOTUS opens the doors on campaign fundraising right as online fundraising is hitting its stride. The party lost its guardrails, and you could see it happening in real-time. Trump was just the culmination of it, a campaign that could effectively wield both social media and online fundraising straight into the White House. Now the old guardrails like Fox News and Limbaugh are having to follow instead of lead, and you get to where we're at today.

Don't take this as a 'sheeple' argument. I'm never a fan of arguing in favor of 'brainwashing' but I do believe in the power of validating beliefs that one would keep out of polite company. And boy howdy are these beliefs being validated all day every day now.

Now, I could be wrong and you could be right that it was only a matter of time, regardless. Maybe they were always going to be fed up after Bush touched the third rail of Social Security and Romney's support of corporatism. I still don't think I'm entirely wrong, though. We're in a whole new era of media consumption and its follow-on effects in politics and culture, and we're still feeling our way through here.

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